The Reluctant Texas Rancher (Harlequin American Romance) by Cathy Gillen Thacker Page A

back and forced herself to stare into his charcoal-gray eyes. “I want the truth, Travis,” she said. “Why did you really break up with me?”
    Travis looked surprised, as if that was the last thing he’d imagined her asking. She absorbed his deepening frown.
    “I know what you said at the time,” Liz continued, wishing she hadn’t blurted out the question that had nagged at her forever, or let herself be so vulnerable again.
    She swallowed and pushed on. “That I was still in high school and you were going off to college. Our age difference was too great. We weren’t what each other needed.”
    But you were what I wanted—and needed, she thought plaintively.
    Travis stepped into her space. “There was also the fact we were both so busy we hardly ever saw each other.”
    His goals again.
    And hers.
    “Would it have made a difference if I had been more open to…you know…”
    “Climbing into the back of a car with me?”
    Liz flushed.
    “I was eighteen. My hormones were raging. But…” he sighed “…I was also smart enough to know that in that regard we were definitely not in the same place.”
    “So you left.”
    “Because we were way too young to be thinking about getting serious.” His smile came, sure and slow. “And sleeping with you then, Liz, even working up to it, however incrementally, would have meant getting very serious.”
    And that, she thought, would have meant they would have indulged in a lot more than simply kissing good-night at the end of their dates.
    All of a sudden the kitchen felt hot and close.
    Liz ducked out the back door, into the spring night. The cool April air was damp and scented with the smells of fresh cut grass, and the flowers her great-grandmother had planted in the half barrels next to the house.
    Liz stared out at the pasture and the clouds moving rapidly overhead.
    It was going to rain. She could feel it in the air, and the cattle knew it, too. The cows were already nudging their calves toward the sheltering trees along the fence.
    Liz folded her arms in front of her and held her chin high when Travis joined her. “I admit I wasn’t ready for more....” Wasn’t ready to completely risk my heart. Not then. Not now.
    He grasped her hips and pulled her close, and she swallowed. “So when you sat me down to have that talk, and broke up with me, I just accepted it as the logical thing to do—even though my gut told me there was more to your decision than what you said. But now…” she dropped her forehead to his chest “…I really need to understand.”
    Travis ran one hand up and down her spine. Sifted the other through her hair. He pressed his forehead to hers, reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “When we first got together, I thought we were the same. Part of it was because of your family. Cartwright women are notorious for not wanting or needing a relationship with a man to be happy.”
    Liz tilted her head to one side. “Andersons are just as independent.”
    He grinned, not about to argue. “The rest had to deal with the fact that we both were very ambitious.” He let her go and stepped back. “We both wanted to be lawyers. We both worked hard in school and on our ranches.” His lips compressed in a wry, self-effacing smile.
    “I thought we’d be able to date casually and have a good time and that when it came time for me to go off to college, you and I would part as friends.”
    “And yet when it actually came time for you to leave…”
    He flashed a wry smile. “I realized it wasn’t that simple.”
    Liz waited, sensing there was more.
    Travis exhaled sharply. “Because of my relationship with you, I was losing focus.” He paused, his expression matter-of-fact. “I knew that if we were going to achieve our dreams, we needed to finish growing up and to pursue our goals with the single-minded dedication we were both known for.”
    “So you have no regrets,” Liz ascertained, not surprised, but disappointed